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wages of being a whiner

I was driving home from work, thinking, dwelling on, and discussing my iniquity with God. A good part of that iniquity revolves of course around this blog and my shortcomings therewith. I think about God every single day, often throughout the day, and I think about my duties to Him and what I should be doing for Him and for myself.

I guess thinking about those duties and actually doing them are two different things. Anyway, the above thought came into my head from Him when I wondered about how long I would have to deal with these constant struggles and stresses. I essentially asked, “What if I have to wait until the end of my life to finally be at peace?”

“It will be worth it.”

So sayeth the Lord. He hasn’t lied to me yet.

We still have no internet, so I’m using my phone as a hotspot for my laptop. I’m getting really tired of having to do this over and over, because it doesn’t work so well compared to streaming, high-speed cable.

Oh, hey! While I’m updating you about the minutia of my life, I might as well tell whoever is still reading this that I had a discussion with my bosses about how I’m probably clinically depressed! Yay! I’m supposed to be in behavioral health, not, you know… in behavioral health. But this seems to be the reality of the situation. Apparently both of the clinicians at our office have noticed a change in me before I even said anything.

For some reason, finding that out was simultaneously encouraging and heartbreaking. Encouraging because at least I know it’s not all in my head, and heartbreaking because oh God it is actually in my head.

I think that’s the last joke of that format I can do tonight, but I’d like to milk one more if I can swing it. They make me smile.

I’m still trying to read Numbers 4-11. I’m stuck on Numbers 7 and my eyes are glazing over. I don’t think I’ve gotten more than 8 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours and my brain is just fried. Gee, I wonder what on earth could be contributing to my depression?

Oh, Jesus. Chapter 7 is so long. And it’s all offerings!

… It’s all the same offering, over and over. They just copy-pasted this whole thing to mess with me.

Okay, so God once again shows me His mysterious ways. I was going to go through Numbers 4-11, all of them, but honestly they’re about the armies packing up and counting off and setting out and all that business.

And then I arrived at…

Numbers 11

…which is the last of the chapters I had to catch up on today.

I can’t even be mad any more! I was going home, and thinking about a story I heard in church the other week, and how the story was very pertinent to me and had a similar moral to a story I’d written, and just wow. So now, today, I wondered to myself if there is a story in the Bible about a righteous man, perhaps one of the old patriarchs or somebody, who begins to stress out and almost resent their destiny and their duties.

Man, fuck Numbers 11.

In verses 11-15, Moses finally gets fed up of all this bulls*** and rages against God. He wonders why on earth he should have to care for them and shepherd them, asking

“Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget them?”

Moses even asks God to just kill him if this is the life he is to live. So it seems I am far from the first person to feel this way.

God tells Moses that he will have others share the spiritual burden, and also that all the whiners down in the camp who want to eat meat will get their meat. God seems to be just as fed up as Moses:

“You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until [meat] comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you.”

— God to Moses, a message for the Israelites, Numbers 11:19-20

In the end, it’s the people that are going to be fed up. Eh? Eh?

He gets it.

Anyway.

Moses is incredulous because he doesn’t know how God is going to provide meat for six hundred thousand people, and wonders if all the fish in the sea are going to be collected for them (Numbers 11:21).

God is like, “What, you don’t trust me? Check dis.” He proceeds to inundate the Israelites with quails. Just like, a bunch of quails that everyone catches and grabs and gets ready to eat.

So they all start feasting and…

“[…] while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was aroused against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague.”

Because that’s what you get when you fuck with the YHWH. Don’t be hatin’ and complainin’, or BOOM! Fuckin’ plagues.